Last of the Last
by Grac3
Summary: Amy and Rory ran away with the Doctor on their anniversary, and have been travelling for seven weeks. The Doctor is just about to suggest that they go back, when they are kidnapped by a mad scientist with a weapon of torture tested on every known species in the universe - except Time Lords. Threeshot. Episode tag: The Power of Three. See warnings inside.
1. Capture

**Warning:** Torture

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 1 – Capture

In all honesty, this trip had got slightly out of hand. It had only meant to include one destination: one trip somewhere romantic, for their anniversary – hopefully with no alien fish pretending to be vampires. Now, seven weeks later, the Doctor had been beginning to wonder if they should be heading back.

The last thing that he remembered, they had been at the seaside. That had been Amy's idea; one last place after they left 1960s Carnaby Street.

"_Right!" the Doctor had exclaimed, clapping his hands together and turning on his heel so that he was standing in front of Amy rather than at her side. "Once Rory gets back, we should probably get back to your party."_

_A look of disappointment crossed Amy's face, but she didn't have time to complain before the aforementioned ex-Roman returned, with a new piece of attire that he hadn't been wearing when he had left them to go in one of the shops._

_As soon as they saw it, each of them had a slightly different reaction: Amy burst out laughing, and the Doctor's eyes went wide._

_Rory's face fell. "What?" he asked, looking from his guffawing wife to the shocked Time Lord._

_The Doctor took three steps to stand in front of Rory, placing a paternal hand on his shoulder. "Rory," he began, with a small smile, "that is by far the ugliest belt in the universe, and I've seen the inside of King Thorromin of Skarnegan 7's closet."_

"_W-" Rory began, his face turning a rather adorable shade of red as he glanced down at the belt now circling his waist. Amy still hadn't stopped laughing. "Is it really that bad?" he asked the Doctor quietly._

_The Time Lord smiled sadly and nodded. "Yes. Yes it is." He lowered his hand from Rory's shoulder. "But you like it, yes?"_

"_Well-" Rory began, but he was cut off._

"_Then that's all that matters!" the Doctor grinned, turning back to Amy. "Now – back to your party." He walked forward purposefully, heading back to where he had parked the TARDIS, passing the redhead before being called back._

"_Wait!" Amy called, and the Doctor turned back. Rory was now standing next to Amy, who had her arms crossed over her chest. "One more."_

_The Doctor narrowed his eyes, trying to pretend that her demand was not one that he wanted to pay attention to. In reality, he had been almost putting off going back to their world, with the cube mystery, and the humdrum, and the everyday. Even this, still a normal day with no historical figures for any of them to accidentally marry or aliens to end up getting chased by – it was still somehow better than whatever was waiting for them back in the early 21st Century. After a brief staring contest of sorts, the Doctor conceded._

"_Alright. One more. But just _one_ more, mind," he told her, still trying to maintain the illusion that he was in fact in control._

_Amy grinned, jumping slightly as they began to walk back to the TARDIS._

"_Where do you want to go?" the Doctor asked once they were back in the control room and he was flicking switches and pulling levers. Amy leaned against the railings with a thoughtful expression on her face._

"_What about…" she began slowly, "the seaside?"_

_The Doctor grinned. "Ooh, I love the seaside. The smell of the sea, the sand between your toes… And I know the perfect place." He set the coordinates and was just about to take off when Amy suddenly appeared by his side and placed her hand on top of his, stopping him from pulling the last lever down. The Time Lord turned to the Scot, confused._

"_What is it?" he asked, as a mischievous grin began to play on his companion's lips._

"_One more thing," she began, and the Doctor inclined his head, inviting her to continue. "This is to celebrate our anniversary, yeah?" The Doctor nodded in agreement. Amy shrugged. "It should be… a family outing." She let go of his hand, and he grinned, understanding her meaning. He sidestepped across the console, and reset the coordinates for Stormcage._

_Just fifteen minutes later, the four of them were sitting on the beach – which was completely deserted due to them having landed on the most freezing January morning ever recorded in human history – munching on ice creams which they had bought from a rather menacing-looking fellow and shivering furiously._

And that was the last thing that he remembered.

Now, he was lying on his back on a hard floor rather than sitting on the beach with an ice cream in his hand and a smile on his face; although, wherever it was that he appeared to be waking up, it was considerably warmer than the beach had been.

"He's waking up!"

"Doctor!"

It was only when he heard the two voices – rather far off, to his right – that he realised that his eyes were closed. That would have to be remedied. As soon as there was light hitting his eyes, he realised that he was, in fact, on the floor: of a cold, grey room with nothing else in it but a large cage, the kind that circuses of olden days would use to transport lions.

A cage that now contained the three members of his family.

As the Doctor blinked away the last vestiges of his unconsciousness, he realised that the cage had been created by building the bars up from the floor: it was stuck, static, and the locked door was on the opposite side to that facing the Doctor. About a foot in front of the cage, a white line had been drawn on the ground.

Amy, Rory and River were sitting at the side of the cage, kneeling – for it was not tall enough for them to stand – with their hands curled around the bars. They appeared relieved that he had finally opened his eyes, but there was still worry present in their expressions.

Once the Doctor was fully aware, he leapt to his feet, ignoring the head rush it caused, and realised for the first time that the four of them were not the room's only occupants: leaning against the far wall that the Doctor was now facing was a man slightly taller than the Doctor, with pockmarked skin and short, sandy hair. He was wearing a scruffy blue t-shirt under a slightly cleaner black jacket, and a pair of denim jeans.

The ice cream vendor from the beach.

He had drugged them.

"Hello," the ice cream vendor grinned, pushing himself off of the wall and walking over to the Doctor.

"Who are you?" the Doctor demanded, earning a vicious smile from the ice cream vendor. "Why did you drug us?"

"My name," the ice cream vendor began, "is Butham. And I am a scientist." As if to prove his testimony, Butham reached into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieved a thick, black box. On the front was a large dial with a line curved across the top, indicating how strong the signal it beamed was transmitting at any one time. At the moment, it was off.

The Doctor's eyes flicked to the remote briefly then back to Butham's face, still marred with that unnerving smile.

"And what is that?" he asked, shifting slightly on his feet and tucking his hands in his pockets.

Butham smirked. "It's a weapon," he explained smugly. "Designed to target a single person at a time. Works on every species in the universe."

"You can't possibly know that," River interrupted, and Butham turned to her for the first time. At first, he appeared slightly surprised, as though he had – up to this point – forgotten that he and the Doctor were not the only ones in the room. "You'd have to try it out on every species that had ever lived, across the entire universe."

"Indeed, I have," Butham grinned, regarding River briefly before turning his attention back to the Doctor. "Except one."

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "Except Time Lords."

"Indeed," Butham repeated. "I had hoped to run into one of your earlier selves; then maybe I could have found a way to Gallifrey before it got destroyed, but…" Butham trailed off, shrugging. "I couldn't pass up the opportunity to test it on a real, living Time Lord while I had the chance."

"So what exactly does this weapon do?" the Doctor asked nonchalantly.

"It's a weapon of torture," Butham explained, "linked up to you directly."

"How?" the Doctor snapped, now feeling himself growing considerably angrier.

Butham said nothing; he merely rolled up his sleeves – the Doctor noticed that he had a Vortex Manipulator tied to his wrist – and tapped his arm with his forefinger and middle finger, just below the crease of his elbow.

Confused, the Doctor pushed up his own sleeves, and noticed that a silver patch had been applied to his skin, just below the creases of his elbows. They looked rather like nicotine patches, but they were obviously made out of metal and had some kind of circuitry in them.

"I couldn't develop the technology until I had tested it on every known species, but once I have, I can get to work on changing it so that the target doesn't need the patches," Butham explained as he rolled down his sleeves.

But the Doctor was only half-listening; he scrabbled at the patches on his arms, trying to rip them off of his skin, but they had been applied too closely to the surface of his skin and his nails weren't long enough to get underneath them to remove them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Butham place his forefinger and his thumb carefully around the dial, and slowly turn it a fraction of an inch.

The effect was immediate: an intense pain shot through his entire body, feeling as though it had originated from the spot between his hearts rather than the patches that had been applied to his arms. He gasped instinctively, stumbling slightly as he tried to take a step nearer to Butham to try and snatch the remote away from him, though he mercifully stayed upright.

After a second or two, Butham turned the dial again, shutting the weapon off. He had a wide grin on his face, now confident in the knowledge that his weapon worked on the Last of his last species.

The Doctor took a few deep breaths, trying to fight down the residual pain that thrummed through his entire body, and trying to ignore the trembling of his fingers as his arms hung by his sides. He glared at Butham from where he stood, feeling an intense hatred for the man standing before him.

"Okay," he breathed, attempting to keep his voice steady despite his vocal chords' apparent desire to waver, "you got what you wanted. Your… device works on Time Lords. Now you can go back to your buyer and tell them that you have a universal method of torture." The Doctor raised his right arm – with some difficulty, he found – to point at his wife and in-laws in the cage next to him. "Now let them go."

He knew that he really shouldn't have been encouraging a lunatic such as Butham to leave them behind as he was doing right now, but his main focus at the moment was not for the rest of the universe: it was for his family, being held captive behind bars – for he knew what it was like to lose his entire family in exchange for saving the universe, and, selfish though it may be, he had no desire to go through the same thing again.

Butham chuckled: a low, sadistic sound rumbling from his chest, his lips curling back over his teeth and a malicious glint twinkling in his eye. He said one word in response: "No."

In a single, swift motion, he turned the dial to the centre of the arc, forcing the Doctor to his knees. Tears were beginning to prickle in the corner of his eyes, and in his efforts to not make a sound, he found that he couldn't breathe.

When Butham released him the second time, he fell forwards onto his hands then sideways, so that he was facing the cage that his three companions had been locked up in. All of them were staring at him: Rory in disbelief, River with that reassuring look that she used to tell him that everything would be alright in the end, and Amy with tears running silently down her face. The Doctor gave them a small smile, even though it felt like it took an unnecessary amount of effort to do so, before his view of them was obscured by Butham's feet.

The scientist raised his boot to the Doctor's shoulder, pushing him onto his back. The light on the ceiling shone down into the Doctor's eyes, making him blink furiously against it. Butham leaned over him, holding the dial so that he could see it, and turned the dial up all the way.

The Doctor _screamed_.

He was sure that no pain – no physical pain, at least – that he had ever endured in his ridiculously long life had ever compared to this. Not even the two times that he had been shot by a Dalek had ever hurt quite this much: it was as though someone had replaced his blood with molten lava and charged it with electricity. He wasn't sure how long it had lasted when it finally disappeared.

He lay on the floor, unable to move except for the large gasps of breath that he was taking: the sudden intake of oxygen was almost as disorientating as the weapon itself, but he could vaguely make out the heavy footsteps of Butham walking away, and – from somewhere far off to his left – a single, stricken sob.

There was a moment of relative peace: he breathed slowly, attempting to regain some of his strength, all the while expecting the weapon to be turned on again at any moment – yet it never was. He was faintly aware of someone calling his name, yet whoever it was appeared to be 'shushed', and all was silent once more.

Suddenly, a loud sound of a sole stamping on the floor thudded near his ear, and he realised that Butham was standing next to his head. An irrational surge of fear washed through him that he was about to be subjected to the weapon once more, yet no such thing happened. Instead, only a single command reached his ears.

"Get up."

The Doctor chuckled at that, a single exhale of indignant breath. There was absolutely no way that he would be able to get up until he had had at least a few hours to recover from that onslaught.

Somewhere above him, he heard the sound of Butham rummaging around for something – something that seemed to be made of metal. His blood ran cold when he realised what it was; as the sound of the safety being taken off of a gun reached his ears.

He licked his lips as he prepared himself to talk. "I'll regenerate," he told Butham, his words slurring slightly as his vocal chords ached from screaming.

A chuckle reached his ears. "Open your eyes, Doctor," Butham ordered, a hint of amusement in his voice.

The Doctor forced his eyes open, fighting the headache that pressed against the inside of his skull as the light from the outside world hit his retinas. Sluggishly, he turned his head to the left, and saw that Butham was indeed holding a gun – but it wasn't pointed at him: it was aimed at the spot right between River's eyes.

"Get up," Butham repeated authoritatively, "or I'll shoot."

For what it was worth, River showed no sign of fear. She stared Butham down – as well as she could when the cage that she was being held in wasn't tall enough for her to stand – with that usual steely expression that even the Doctor was scared of sometimes (though he would never let her know that).

But the reality of this situation was worse than merely the prospect of River dying, despite her courage in the face of death and the Doctor's sheer terror at the thought of losing her. It was the simple fact that River didn't die here: the Doctor knew when River died, he had seen it, and it wasn't here, and it wasn't now.

If Butham killed her here, a fixed point in time would be rewritten, and he could only guess at the chaos that would ensue. Maybe the Reapers would return, cleansing the wound by consuming everything in it, and there would be no way to get rid of them this time – there was no Pete Tyler who could die to restore order again. They wouldn't be able to bring River back to life to stop the bacteria from consuming the entirety of reality. Everything would end; everything would die.

The entire universe was depending on him getting up.

And he wasn't sure he could do it.


	2. Detainment

**Warning:** Torture

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 2 – Detainment

River's eyes weren't fixed on the gun that was being trained at her; they were not even looking at Butham anymore. She had turned away from the mad scientist long ago, and was watching her husband's efforts to push himself to his feet.

She wasn't exactly sure if this desire to rip Butham limb from limb was the normal reaction to this kind of situation – or if, indeed, there were any normal reactions to this kind of situation – but as the Doctor's screams, though they had stopped in reality, continued to replay over and over again in her head, all she truly wanted to do was to replace them with those of the scientist.

The Doctor was lying on his back at Butham's feet, barely able to keep his eyes open, let alone get up. His head had dropped to the side after Butham had instructed him to get up, his hair falling over his eyes slightly. Normally, he would have moved it out of the way; now, he barely seemed to be able to lift a finger.

His breathing was loud; his chest rising and falling deeply as he struggled to draw in enough oxygen for his muscles to work. It was a tense moment, during which Butham's hand never wavered: next to her, Rory seemed to be conflicted between his concern for his daughter and concern for his son-in-law, while on the other side of him, Amy's knuckles were white as she held on to the bars encasing them, as silent tears streaked down her cheeks.

Eventually, the Doctor managed to move his arm: his elbow scraped against the ground as he laid his palm flat out beside him, facing down. He slowly did the same with the other arm, now resembling some two dimensional version of the Birdy Dance. He gasped again, the colour rapidly draining from his face as he sought the strength to push himself up. River held her breath, as though somehow she could transfer her own to her husband.

The Doctor groaned as he sat up, his head falling forwards and his hair slipping over his face. Even from this distance, River could see the trembles that wracked his body with the exertion. With some difficulty, he rolled over onto his hands and knees, and then stopped. He was panting now, his head dropping onto the floor between his hands, making some grotesque image as he appeared to be bowing to his tormentor.

Butham didn't appear happy that the Doctor was making such little progress; he lifted the gun to the ceiling and shot once, the sound reverberating loudly throughout the plain, grey room, before he returned it to his target. The Doctor jumped at the noise, gasping in shock.

"I'm not joking around," Butham reminded him. "Get – up."

"Why are you doing this?"

Butham turned slowly from the agonised Doctor to Rory, his brow knitted in confusion at being addressed by the one who had been silent up to this point. River turned slightly to her father, trying to keep both of the men in her life in her line of sight at the same time. Rory's eyes were wide, as though he had almost surprised himself by speaking out loud. His bottom lip trembled slightly in the silence that followed his question, for a moment making him resemble a fish. Yet he seemed to reason that now that he had spoken, he might as well continue.

"Y-you have the proof for your buyer," he carried on, his voice wavering slightly with nervousness; "you don't need to do this."

It was a moment before Butham's mouth curled up into a smile: a cruel, sadistic smile that reached the madness in his eyes. "Who said I had a buyer?" he asked, chuckling, and suddenly the penny dropped.

Butham wasn't doing this because he had been paid to; he didn't have someone out there waiting for his weapon to be delivered with a universal guarantee: he was doing this because he wanted to – because, to him, it was _fun_.

All nervousness left Rory's expression, replaced with pure disgust.

"You're a psychopath," he spat, earning a small smile from River.

"No, father," she corrected him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "_I'm_ a psychopath," she explained, turning back to Butham and fixing him with a look of pure hatred. "_He's_ a lunatic."

"A lunatic with a gun," Butham agreed, looking back down at the Doctor. "So you better hurry up."

The Doctor sighed, straightening up so that he was kneeling, though he still didn't look as though he would be able to stand up yet. There was still a thin sheen of sweat on his brow and his complexion was much paler than usual; his eyes were still half-lidded and he was swaying dangerously. Eventually, he shifted one of his legs so that he was on one knee, before finally pushing himself to stand rather precariously on his feet. He was visibly shaking now, and he didn't appear stable enough to remain upright for long.

Butham made a gesture with his hand at the Doctor, indicating that he should follow him. Butham led the Doctor around the cage – all the while keeping the gun trained on River's head – as the Time Lord shuffled along pathetically behind him. When he was standing next to the cage, he reached out for the bars, resting against them so that he didn't fall over.

Butham reached into his pocket, pulling out the key to the cage and opening it just wide enough that he could shove the Doctor inside. The Doctor fell to his knees, unable to stand at his full height in the short cage. As Butham walked back around the cage, River made to go to him, but was instructed by the scientist to stay put. Reluctantly, she turned away from her husband to Butham, who had now returned to his position by the white line drawn on the floor.

"Well," be began, smiling, "what a success!" The three prisoners who were able to fixed him with a steely glare. "Now I'm sure that my weapon works, I have no use for you anymore, so I guess I'll be on my way." Butham rolled up his sleeve and tapped some coordinates into the Vortex Manipulator on his wrist; he was just about to disappear when he paused, a thoughtful expression crossing his face.

"You know… it would be a shame to waste those patches," he murmured, a malicious grin forming on his lips as though this was an idea which had just come to him now rather than having been thought out before already.

He reached for the dial on the remote in his hands, turning it to its fullest position. Behind the three of them, the Doctor cried out and slumped to the floor. Butham smiled, placing the remote down on the ground, just beyond the white line, and pressed the button on his Vortex Manipulator.

As soon as the mad scientist was gone, the three Ponds reached out between the bars, trying to grab the remote to stop the Doctor's agony. Yet it was not long before they realised the purpose of the white line drawn on the floor: it was the farthest that any of them could reach, and the tips of their fingers could only scrape the very edge of the remote.

River seemed not to be able to reach as far as her parents, and in this seemingly hopeless situation, she turned back to her husband, who was visibly straining against the effects of the weapon. His face was contorted in agony, his back arched and his muscles locked in place. He was turning a dangerous shade of red as he gasped, fighting to draw in breath.

River turned away from the remote, scooting behind the Doctor and lifting him up so that he was leaning against her, sitting between her legs. She held him tightly to her chest, fighting to keep him still as tremors wracked his body. He was pressing his head painfully into her shoulder, his face angled to the ceiling so that she could see the tears streaming down his cheeks from beneath his eyelids. His cries of pain were quickly dissolving into desperate sobs.

She glanced over at her parents, but they were nowhere closer to reaching the remote: it would seem that Butham really had left them there to die, and – if they couldn't turn off the weapon – then River was sure that the Doctor would be the first to go.

_Maybe he'll regenerate_, a voice in her head supplied, but she realised that that was no better. Back when she had first been learning about the Doctor – back before she had been River Song – she had often wondered why he had always seemed to scared and sad about the prospect of regenerating. It wasn't really like he was dying; he would carry on, simply with a new face.

But when faced with the possibility of the regeneration of _her_ Doctor, she finally understood – for, although the Doctor would live on, he would still die as he was now; only his memories would truly carry on to remind the universe that this new man once had a different face, a bow tie and a tweed jacket.

"_Please_," he sobbed, and the sound tore River's heart into pieces. "Please…"

River looked to her right, at her parents. They were still trying to reach far enough through the gaps between the bars to get to the remote and end the Doctor's anguish – with just as little success as they had been having before she had sought to offer her husband some modicum of comfort.

It took only a few more minutes for Rory to sigh exasperatedly and pull his arms back into the cage.

"It's no use," he sighed, dropping his hands on his thighs so they landed with a _slap_. "We need something to help reach it."

Amy followed her husband back into the cage, slumping as she listened, all concerns for her posture gone. Her cheeks were red and puffy, streaked with tear tracks and smudged mascara. The defeat in the air was palpable, broken only by the cries of the Doctor as he writhed in River's arms.

"Rory," Amy began slowly, her voice losing the sadness it had held before. "Your belt…"

Rory let out an indignant breath and glared at his wife. "I don't think now is the time to be taking the mick out of my belt! I get that it's uglier than anything of King Theremin's of Skegness 7's, but _I _like it, and the Doctor said himself that that's all that matters-"

"No," Amy interrupted, holding up a finger to silence the Roman, her eyes transfixed on the belt encircling his waist, "we could use it. To get the remote."

Rory's brow furrowed as he looked down at the belt himself. "Well-" he began, but was cut off when Amy reached forward for his buckle. "Hey!" he exclaimed, and River decided to look away as a furious blush rose up her father's cheeks. Instead, she looked down at her husband, whose eyes were now open – if only slightly – and the recognition within their age-old depths was strained with the agony caused by Butham's device.

"River…" he breathed, his voice thick with emotion, "_please_… make it stop." His eyes began to slip closed once more as his expression became a pained grimace. The veins in his neck were bulging as he tensed against the pain, and there was still a red hue of exertion tainting his skin.

"Oh, my dear," River sighed, gently tracing the backs of her fingers across his cheek. She doubted it made much difference to the pain that he was experiencing, but in the lack of the ability to really do anything else, it would have to do for now.

She chanced a glance over to her right, seeing that her father had now been relieved of his belt – and thankfully his trousers hadn't fallen down – and Amy was now threading the leather through the gap in the bars. She made an arc with the belt, holding each end with each of her hands and reaching out to the remote.

The belt stretched beyond where the remote was lying; Amy placed it against the ground, drawing it nearer so that the remote was dragged along the ground by the loop, until it was near enough to the bars for her to grab it and twist the dial. The device shut off, and the Doctor slumped against River, gasping heavily as his head lolled to the right.

Steam was beginning to rise lazily from the Doctor's sleeves, where the patches on his arms had been working overtime to subject him to Butham's weapon. The red colouring of his skin began to disappear as he relaxed, his expression slipping into one of exhausted neutrality. With what little strength he had, he shifted slightly in River's arms, so that he could press his face into the side of her neck, his nose just touching the hollow of her throat. He took a deep breath, his exhales ticking her skin. She smiled down at him, momentarily forgetting that they were not the only two in the room.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Amy returning that atrocious belt, and Rory quickly put it back on. River lifted her head to look at them, still trailing her fingers absent-mindedly across the Doctor's cheek. Amy watched the two of them with a warmth in her eyes; for all that she thought that they were bad influences on each other, she would still admit that they made a good couple; 'cute', River believed that she had once referred to them as.

Yet she wasn't looking at them for long; she quickly turned back to her own husband, throwing her arms around his shoulders and letting out a relieved sob. Rory returned the embrace, holding her tight to him and closing his eyes.

River suddenly felt the fluttering of eyelashes against the side of her neck, and she looked down to the injured Time Lord in her arms. He was opening his eyes lazily, those irises which had been so filled with agony before now gazing up at her with such a loving expression it made her heart swell. The corner of his mouth twitched, and his eyes began to slip closed again.

"Riv…" he began, his voice no more than a breath, "luv… y…"

He was drifting now, falling further and further into unconsciousness.

"I know, my darling," she murmured, not entirely sure whether or not he could hear her. "I know."


	3. Escape

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 3 – Escape

Over the years, the Doctor had woken up in a number of strange places; he'd woken up in beds that were not his own, he had woken up on floors that he didn't recognise, and once he had even woken up on a trapeze – he was amazed that he hadn't managed to fall off during the night, though he did hit the deck once he had panicked and begun flailing around upon realising just where he was.

Yet he didn't think that there was any place he'd preferred to wake up than where he was waking up right now: in River's arms. He was leaning against her, one of her arms wrapped protectively across his torso while her free hand was on the top of his head, buried deep in his hair and running his locks through her fingers. The action was indescribably soothing, almost lulling him off to sleep again; he had certainly planned on feigning unconsciousness for a little longer, so as to enjoy this sensation without being disturbed.

It was not to become the case, however; he somehow couldn't help but take in a large lungful of air. The sound of his gasp was loud and harsh to his ears, and suddenly the hand on his head was gone, placed instead on the top of his arm and lightly gripping his bicep – an action not painful in the slightest in and of itself, but he felt a sting of disappointment at no longer being stroked; perhaps he was more catlike than he realised.

Knowing that he would not be able to pretend that he was still asleep for any longer, the Doctor opened his eyes and looked up, his vision filing with the beautiful, smiling face of his wife. He could get used to waking up like this.

But soon he remembered where they were, and who else was also present, and so – as much as he wanted to – he realised that snogging the living daylights out of the closest thing to a Time Lord other than him living in this universe since the Master had jumped into the Time Lock probably wasn't the best thing to do.

"Doctor?" a tentative voice asked, and the Doctor reluctantly looked away from River to the side. Amy and Rory were sitting with their backs to the bars of the cage, facing away from the white line that had been drawn on the floor. The Doctor had known what the line had been for as soon as he had seen the remote, even though he hadn't been able to say anything while Butham was there; and now, Butham was long gone, no doubt working on his weapon and developing it to work without the patches.

The smile on his face melted away as he remembered those patches, attached brutally to the skin of his arms. He scrabbled at his sleeves, rolling them up desperately to try and remove them.

"Sweetie," River said, tightening her grip on his arms as he rolled up his sleeves.

The material moved out of the way, to reveal two round, red and sore marks on his arms – but no patches.

"We took them off," Amy explained, drawing the Doctor's attention again as he ran his fingers over the red marks on his skin, checking that it was really raw flesh and not just a hallucination. Amy held up the patches with her free hand; the other was curled around Rory's. "Wasn't easy; they were stuck on really well."

The Doctor gave her a small smile as she threw the patches down on the floor in front of her with a _slap_. "Thank you."

"So…" Rory began, drawing out the vowel, "how about we get out of here? What?" he added, seeing the awkward expression that had dawned on the Doctor's face at those words. "We _can_ get out of here, can't we?"

"Well…" the Doctor began, trailing off; he wasn't sure how to break the news to his companions. He sighed with exasperation as River reached around to his chest, patting his jacket to check the contents of his pockets. She found them empty and scowled.

"You left the sonic in the TARDIS, didn't you?" she asked.

"You left your Vortex Manipulator in the TARDIS!" the Doctor countered, rather childishly, looking up at her. Even upside-down, her angry expression with her lips thinned into a severe line sent a shiver of panic running through him; he quickly looked away.

"And Butham had the key?" Amy asked, in what was rather scarily the same tone as the one her daughter had used; the Doctor noticed a slight look of fear flash through Rory's eyes at the thought of River having inherited his wife's temper. The Doctor would have found that funny if he hadn't have thought that it was just as scary as the Roman obviously did.

"Yes," the Doctor answered levelly, as a collective sigh ran through the cage.

The Doctor wracked his brain for a solution: he always found a solution to (almost) any problem, and he would find a solution to this as well. There seemed to be no way that they could get to the TARDIS from where they were now – for, from what the Doctor had seen of the room in which they were currently sitting, it didn't even have a door for them to exit through; it would seem that Butham was rather dependent on his Vortex Manipulator – so they were still stuck even if they could find a way to get out of the cage.

However…

A thought suddenly popped into the Doctor's head: a ridiculous, wonderful, possibly insane idea that could just work. If they couldn't get to the TARDIS, then why couldn't they bring the TARDIS to them?

He tilted his head back to convey this idea to River, though it would appear by the look on her face – as though she was rather unsure of herself – that she had had the same idea as him.

"That couldn't work…" she wondered, her brow furrowing slightly.

The Doctor grinned. "It might."

"But _how_?" River asked, her wild curls bobbing slightly as she shook her head, disbelieving.

"You're half Time Lord," the Doctor reminded her. "Not only that, you're the child of a TARDIS – a child of _the_ TARDIS, and I have a psychic link with the old girl!"

"Uh, Doctor?" Amy asked, though the Doctor was only half-listening to her as he had a semi-telepathic conversation with his wife with their eyes. "What are you talking about?"

When the silent conference had ended and all had been decided, the Doctor looked back at Amy and Rory, his face full of boyish excitement. "We're getting out of here."

He looked back up at River, and she reached around him to take both of his hands in hers. They closed their eyes and held on tight.

"Contact," they murmured, their minds syncing together.

_"Imagine being in the control room,"_ he told her telepathically, as the image of the interior of the TARDIS floated to the forefront of their conjoined minds. The image became a signal, beaming out across space to the seaside where the TARDIS had been parked what seemed like an age before, until it reached the ship and began to draw it back. The familiar wheezing sound surrounded them as the signal returned, and when it stopped, they opened their eyes and let go of their hands, to find themselves in the control room.

"Ha!" the Doctor exclaimed, clapping his hands together enthusiastically.

"Doctor?" Rory asked, drawing the Time Lord's attention. The Roman pointed to the bars that were still surrounding them. "We're still inside the cage."

"Not for long," the Doctor assured him, sitting up and moving away from River – the cold replacing her presence behind him making him nearly shiver with sadness and disappointment – and reached through the bars up to the control panel where he had left the sonic screwdriver. He had to strain for it, pressing the side of his face against the bars as he reached as far as he could, but he soon retrieved it, opening the door and letting them all out.

"Right," the Doctor breathed once everyone was out, standing next to the console and rubbing his hands together. "I'll sort that out later," he pointed to the cage they had just left, "but right now, I think it's time we get back to your party, don't you?" He began pressing buttons on the console, but had only got so far as connecting the TARDIS to the nearest junction exit on the Time Vortex when he was distracted by a loud shout.

"River, no!" Rory exclaimed.

The Doctor lifted his head to look around the console, seeing River fixing her Vortex Manipulator to her wrist and pressing buttons on it to set coordinates. Rory took a step closer to try and stop her from leaving, but she had already finished and was ready to go.

The Roman reached out for her, but she grabbed her gun from the console – the Doctor had made her leave it behind because he had been sure that she wouldn't need it on what he had thought was going to be a simple trip to the seaside – and pointed it straight at him. Rory stopped in his tracks, eyeing the pistol with fear in his eyes and holding his hands up in surrender. Amy stood at his side, shocked at her daughter's actions.

"River, what are you doing?" the Doctor spat, not daring to take step closer to his wife, the psychopath, for fear that she would train that gun on him.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," she said, not looking away from her parents. "But I saw the coordinates that Butham tapped into his Vortex Manipulator."

The Doctor's hearts sank as he realised what she was going to do. He placed his hand on the console, sending a telepathic message to the TARDIS to make a note of those coordinates. Even so, he took a small step towards her, wishing he could see her face rather than just the back of her head, and tried to keep her here.

"River, please," he begged, "don't."

There was a pause, and for a moment, he almost thought that she was going to listen to him.

Yet the moment passed as quickly as it had begun, and in one swift movement, River pressed the button on her Vortex Manipulator and disappeared in a crackle of electricity.

The Doctor growled in frustration, returning to pressing buttons and twisting dials but now doing so furiously, because he had to follow his wife before she did something that she would regret.

"Doctor, what just happened?" Amy demanded of the Time Lord, storming around the console to stand next to him, her biceps tensed and her hands balling into fists at her side – because if there was anything that would get Amelia Pond absolutely riled, it was someone threatening Rory. The Roman himself was catching his breath a few sides along the polygonal console, leaning back against it as the colour slowly returned to his face.

"She's going to kill Butham," the Doctor told her succinctly, as the wheezing noises of the TARDIS began to fill the control room and they were on the move, following River Song across the universe (and not for the first time).

"Oh, no…" Amy breathed, turning on her heel and walking back around to her husband with one hand on her forehead.

The TARDIS landed a few seconds later, and the Doctor burst through the door. They appeared to be in a shed somewhere – though it was the biggest shed that he had ever seen – filled with various pieces of equipment and accoutrements that were no doubt related to the development of Butham's weapon.

The scientist himself looked a little worse for wear, however: he was lying on his back, in between two benches, held in place by River's shoe resting a sufficient amount of her weight on his throat to make him struggle for air. A black eye was already forming on his face, and there was blood seeping from his nose and the corner of his mouth. He looked up at the gun that was aimed at his head with absolute terror in his eyes. The Doctor noticed that the scientist's own weapon had been left on a bench a few rows along, too far away for him to reach.

"River?" the Doctor began tentatively, walking up slowly behind her and noticing that the Ponds had decided to stay in the TARDIS. Even though she couldn't see him, he held up his hands nonetheless. "River, think about this."

"Why?" she growled, her grip tightening on the gun. "He hurt you."

"I don't want you to kill for me."

"I've killed for you before."

"In battle," he reminded her, still taking steps towards her. "_Please_, River; don't do this."

A moment passed in silence, only broken by Butham's pathetic and pained whimpers.

"What do you suggest?" she asked. "We can't let him develop his weapon."

"No," the Doctor agreed," but we can hand him over to the Shadow Proclamation. Let them deal with him."

He began taking steps to the side so that he could see River's face; she appeared conflicted, doubting herself in a way that he had never seen before. She was taking deep breaths as she battled with herself – half of her wanting to blow Butham's face off, and half of her wanting to take the peaceful route that her husband would always advocate. There was a tense moment before she finally decided to listen to him and held her hands up, her gun hanging limply from her fingers as she lifted her foot from the scientist's throat.

Butham scrabbled to his feet, whimpering in fright, but he knew that he was done; he wouldn't be able to escape from them now – River may have been talked out of shooting him in the head there and then, but she was still volatile enough that there was still a chance that she would fire if he tried to run for the door.

The jostled the scientist into the TARDIS and dropped him off at the Shadow Proclamation – giving them the coordinates of his shed so that they could dispose of the weapon as they saw fit – before taking River back to Stormcage (she and Rory shared a make-up hug before she left).

Then, finally, after seven weeks of travelling that was only supposed to last one day at the most, they went back to the party to finish celebrating the Ponds' anniversary.

Maybe, the Doctor mused, should stay on Earth for a bit longer; after all, he still had the cubes mystery to figure out…


End file.
